Not actually sure how many parts to this year’s birthday there will be. Part 2 is the actual day-of celebrations, which included donuts for breakfast, a lunch out, a special movie experience with Nana and Papa, and a dinner and desert out of his choosing…culminating with the highly anticipated opening of presents. I get the feeling there will be one more celebration as a slew of family arrives over the next two days – all looking to share in the excitement!

(must say, that I love this first picture)

7 YEARS OLD!!!

Early mornings. Long days. Short races.

Having done it for like 15 years competitively, I should know and understand this, right? Sure do…from a kids hang-out-with-friends perspective. Now as a parent, there is a different reality to this set up.

Ezra has been doing lessons for quite a while, and for the first time, joined the summer league swim team. Summer league is what I would call a non-competitive fun league, compared to the year-round club swimming of high degrees of competitiveness. To be fair, they practice, race, win, loose, etc…but there isn’t the same pressure; and because it is only six weeks long, it’s full of all ability level swimmers. Regardless, it is a parent’s dream…short season, intro to serious sport without long term commitment, and  fun for the kids.

The team has been practicing for two weeks, and those practices finally culminated in the first of five scheduled meets. This season, Ezra swims in the 6 and Under age group, and is officially eligible for only three events: 25m free, 25m back, and 25m breast. We signed him up for the free and back races, and threw him to the racing wolves to see what would happen.

Being at the pool at 545am, watching the set up and warm up, hearing the starter, and listening to the races brought back a lot of good memories. But being part of the larger experience, and seeing it from the seat of a non-participant was a lot more fun than I initially thought it would be. Of course, when Ezra lined up in the heating area, then moved to the starting blocks, then dove (ish) in when the starters “beep!” sounded, then raced as hard as he could to the other end of the long course pool, then finished second in his heat during his first ever race, then got out of the pool with an exhausted smile…well, that made Ahna and I pretty damn proud. Then he did it all over again about an hour later in the backstroke race with a less good finish position, but with all the same effort and joy.

The friend party. While in and of itself, this isn’t a new experience, this year marked the first year that it was entirely up to Ezra on who to invite. Friends from school and friends from life – and none of our parental influence outside of limiting the number of attendees.

This year’s theme was Pokeman (which appears popular again evidenced by a couple of other similarly aged kids having it as the theme of their party). It turns out that nobody, including the kids who love it, have any idea on what Pokeman actually is or how to play it. Ezra enjoys watching the cartoons and collecting the cards – but doesn’t actually do anything with the stuff…which is just fine by us. Outside of Lego sets, the Pokeman cards are the only thing that he collects, and that has been a fun process to witness. Pokeman cards are for him similar to what football cards were for me.

It has been mentioned before, but Ahna has developed quite a knack for building amazing birthday cakes for the kids. Of course, this would be no different. She stayed up to the wee hours of the morning the night before making a ridiculous Pikachu cake and some awesome Pokeball take-home bags.

Most of the last month here in Colorado has been rainy – like Pacific northwest rain at times – so it was nice that at least for the afternoon of his party the weather broke into warm sunshine. From a parent perspective, the unopposed highlight of the party was during the cake presentation/signing of Happy Birthday. Ezra – completely unprovoked – invited Elia to join him on his chair to help him blow out the candles. No fighting, no whining…just pure kindness; and it was beautiful to watch.